All these were so new and novel to the lads, threading their way through
the great metropolis, that they forgot their real business for a time, and
feasted their eyes and ears for hours.

Finally, they roused themselves and went to work. The experience of the
two, for a time at least, was very similar. Tom first stopped in a
dry-goods house, and asked whether they could give him anything to do. A
short "No" was the reply, and the proprietor instantly turned his back
upon him. Then he tried a drug-store, where he was treated in the same
manner. In a hat and cap store, the rotund clerk tried to chaff him, but
he didn't make much of a success of it. In answer to his question, the
clerk replied that he didn't need a boy just then, but when he did he
would send his carriage around to the Metropolitan for him.

When Tom timidly introduced his errand to an old gentleman in spectacles,
as he sat at his desk in a large shipping-office, the old fellow exclaimed
in an awed voice,--

"Great Heavens, no! I don't want to hire any boy."

And so it went, hour after hour, until the future, which had looked so
beautiful in the morning, gradually became overcast with clouds, and the
poor lad was forced to stop and rest from sheer weariness.

He kept it up bravely till night, when he started on his return to his
lodgings. He found on inquiry that he was several miles distant, his
wanderings having covered more ground than he supposed. He had made over
thirty applications, and in no instance had he received one grain of
encouragement. In more than one case he had been insulted and ordered from